human tails and the midriff - hiccups, what are the creatonist theories about them?

Hi wirkkalaj,

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You are right, you didn't say God. Any reference to a designer is the same as God to me, so it's my mistake. I'll use designer from now on.

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Please don't do that. If you mean God, just come out and say it. That's the honest thing to do.Using "designer" as a euphemism for God is merely a tactic employed by the ID lobby in order to disguise the essentially religions origins and aims of their movement. It's dishonest, a way of playing "hide the Bible".The only reason they do it is because Edwards v. Aguillard ruled creationism (including so-called "scientific creationism") religious and unscientific. That meant it couldn't be taught in US schools, so - voil! - along comes intelligent design...Edwards v. Aguillard was in 1987. In 1989, the formerly quite openly creationist textbook Of Pandas and People is edited to incorporate "intelligent design material. This is not a coincidence; the changes were made so that ID proponents could engage in a dishonest effort to hide their religious motivations and masquerade as scientists, thus sneaking their propaganda under the wire and into the schools. It's dishonest. In fact, it is a lie.If you want to refer to God, just call him God. It's the only honest thing to do. Anyway, using the term "designer" won't magically transform religious arguments into scientific ones; if anything, it will just confuse matters and weaken your argument.Do yourself a favour and just say what you mean. If that makes your argument unscientific, so be it.

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

Maybe I should use the subjunctive mode. If there were an designer he would be an imbecile, his designs, pardon my french, sucks.

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There is no better love between 2 people than mutual respect for each other WT Young, 2002Who gave anyone the authority to call me an authority on anything. WT Young, 1969Since Evolution is only ~90% correct it should be thrown out and replaced by Creation which has even a lower % of correctness. W T Young, 2008

I use designer, creator, god and/or almighty because they all mean the same thing to me. I have no illusions of a designer being any more of a scientific argument than that of a god. I do not wish to "hide the bible" in anyway. It was most unintentionally done.However, ID's tactics, while not completely up front, are by no means deceitful. I would say Evolution used the exact same tactics back in the day.

Perhaps you would like to enlighten us as to when and what exact tatics "Evolution used" "back in the day" ? I'm not aware of Evolution as being anything other science and hence there being no need to be deceitful.

Well, I commend your honesty.

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I use designer, creator, god and/or almighty because they all mean the same thing to me.

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Of course this means that every time you mention intelligent design here on in, we're all going to know that you really mean biblical creationism. Of course you could just say "God" or "creationism"...

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I have no illusions of a designer being any more of a scientific argument than that of a god.

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So we are agreed then that any use of ID on your part is no more than religious apologetics? Nice.

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I do not wish to "hide the bible" in anyway.

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Great. It's good to know where you stand.Of course, every time you get your Bible out, you are explicitely admitting that you don't have a scientific argument to make. That's a bit like shooting yourself in the foot, when you're posting in a science thread.

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However, ID's tactics, while not completely up front, are by no means deceitful.

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Disguising your one's religious apologetics movement as science is far from honest.

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I would say Evolution used the exact same tactics back in the day.

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Rather off-topic here; perhaps you would like to start a thread on the dishonesty of Darwin or something.Mutate and Survive

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"A curious aspect of the theory of evolution is that everybody thinks he understands it." - Jacques Monod

I'll turn tue question over. If our ancesotrs did have a functionnal tail that could be used as some primates use theirs these days, why did we lose it ?I mean, seeing the many advantages that it would have brought us to have a functionnal tale which could act as a 'third hand', why would any of ancestors who would have lost his tail, or have a shorter one, been advantaged by natural selection ?This is a bit of a humoristic question, but an answer is needed. Becuase you can't claim that we have lost a tail through evolution without saying why evolution would have made us lose it.

And by "we" and "us", I assume you are obviously referring to us great apes? Us chimps, gorillas, humans, orangs, etc

You're assuming that the ancestor of great apes and monkeys had a prehensile tail, but do you even know this to be true? It's quite possible that the prehensile tail evolved after the split between monkeys and apes. In fact, only New World monkeys have prehensile tails. Old World monkeys do not, and neither do lemurs. It could very well be that the tail that the great apes "lost" was no more useful than any other tail you'd find on a cat or a dog. Useful, for certain things, but perhaps not useful enough to be selected for in that lineage, and definitely no third hand.Edited by Stagamancer, : No reason given.

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We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

Well, I was more thinking about we humans, but I understand what you mean.Now my question may stem from a miscomprehension of the human evolutionnary lineage, but if the OP said that the extra tail is a vestigial organ, it means that our ancestors had tails. And so our closest relatives, the great apes you mentioned, should also probably have vestigial tails also. And even probably should have kept their tails also as having a tail should be favored as compared to not having one.Obviously, my opinion is that this phenomenon is just a medical thing, where a patient would simply have his coccyx grow way too long. I mean, some people are born with extra large skulls, or extra long femurs, or extra long fingers, and no one claims any of these cases are vestigial remnants of our evolutionnary past. So I don't quite see how an extra long coccyx would be any different. (I am not an anatomist, so maye bit is is not the coccyx).

Well I'm not a professional on the evolutionary lineage of tails, but according to the mainstream idea of the evolutionnary tree, was it prehensile or not ?And if the tail of a dog isn't useful, why didn't they lose theirs ? (There is no jelousy in this question ... oh well maybe a little haha)

Well, I'm not primatologist, but seeing as how only new world monkeys have a prehensile tail and no old world primates do, it would be pretty weird if the ancestor of both lines had a prehensile tail, wouldn't it?I'm not saying the tail of a dog isn't useful to dogs, but they use it mostly for balance while running on all fours. The great apes don't really do this, so they haven't maintained a tail. However, other primates, such as baboons that do run on all four regularly, still do have a tail.

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We have many intuitions in our life and the point is that many of these intuitions are wrong. The question is, are we going to test those intuitions?
-Dan Ariely

there are tails that are 12+ inches long, and those are not just a coccux grown to long, those tails have glands, muscles, nerves, etc in them. if it were just a coccyx grown too long, it wouldn't have those as coccyx is just bone and 12+ inches long is in my opinion a bit long for an overgrown bone..here is a picture of a child with tail: Edited by sywen, : No reason given.

Some points for your consideration:* Humans are descended from Old World monkeys. No Old World monkey has a prehensile tail.* Natural selection must have a tendency to remove whatever's not really necessary. For consider that every appendage has a cost: it costs to produce it, it costs to maintain it, it carries a risk of injury or infection. If it's not much use, then that's a selective pressure to remove it. Now, in New World monkeys, the tail helps them hang on to trees, in Old World monkeys it serves as an organ of balance ... it is clearly of less use in ground-dwelling apes, such as ourselves, chimp, gorillas, all tailless.* This argument, which I've seen before, seems strange in the mouths of creationists. For if humans would be better if we had tails, then why did an omniscient creator not provide us with them? If, as you must maintain, God did not mess up, then how could our lack of tails be an example of evolution messing up? Surely the creationist question must always be: "How could evolution produce something so perfect that so many people attribute it to God?" not "How could evolution produce something so dumb that I could have designed it better myself?" For if you think that your idea is better, and you attribute the status quo to God ... you see the problem?I recently wrote an article on the Argument From Undesign, you might want to take a look.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

I knew next to nothing about all this when coming into this discussion, my question was more like 'having a tail would be freakin' nice, why did we lose it ?'Of course, I was thinking of a prehensile tail, but my only memory of anything on this was a high school video we had in history class who showed our ancesotrs with prehensile tails. Needless to say, it wasn't the best source hehe.Now it seems that the ancestor of old world monkeys did not have a prehensile tail I checked on 'Ida' which is the latest fossil that made some waves in the human lineage a couple of weeks ago, and the only one that I remembered had a tail, it turned out that it wasn't prehensile.

Hi, thanks for the questions, I am Creationist.first of all we have to observe that there is no "creationist theory" for what might be called a minor problem in a hypothesis.My main answer is that biblical creationism explains that this is not a perfect system. Secondly, it follows that in a fallen world many problems will abound. Animals and humans are now subject to chance and death.Rather than taking on a fallacy of association, we have to observe that all animals and humans share many traits. Logically this does not mean we are necessarily related.It is called the fallacy of the undistributed middle.An example is to find something you share in common, and then fallaciously assign a causal link where no such link exists.For example, certain animals might have blue eyes, does this mean I inherited my blue eyes from such organisms?